Tuesday, November 20, 2018

How Green is Your City?

The UK's Office for National Statistics has released two interactive maps which show how much greenery there is in every street in the Welsh towns of Cardiff and Newport. To create the two maps in How Green is Your Street the ONS analyzed every pixel in every Street View image of the two cities. From that analysis they were able to map green every single street is, in both cities.

The maps show how green each street is by overlaying a 3D height chart on top of the city's roads. The higher the chart then the greener the street. You can also click on any street on either map to view a percentage 'green' score for the street and its level of greenness compared to every other street in the city.

The ONS analysis is very similar to MIT's Treepedia project, which also analyses Google Maps Street View imagery in order to determine a 'Green View' score for city streets.

MIT Sensable City Lab uses Google Maps Street View images to assess the amount of tree canopy cover that exists in an ever growing list of cities around the world. They then use this data to give each of the assessed cities a 'Green View Index' score.

Each city on Treepedia is given an overall Green View score. If you select a city on Treepedia you can view an interactive map which shows the green score for each individual street. Colored circles on the map provide an overview of the tree canopy cover that is available at locations across the city. If you select one of the colored circles on the map you can view the 'Green View' score given for that location and view a Street View image of the address.